There are a number of Rare fish in Legion, and items (bait or otherwise) that will help you catch them.The Rare fish and items to catch them are zone specific (although some are obtainable on any shoreline of the Broken Isles).

Rare Fish

There are 18 rare fish coming in Legion that can be fished up. Each rare fish grants +5 to Fishing skill when used, consuming it in the process.

There are 3 Rare fish per zone, and 3 that can be caught on any coastal waters.

These can be fished up from a Fishing skill of 1, so this can be an effective way to power level Fishing.

Catching one of the rare fish listed below while fishing will grant the achievement Prise surprise. Catching them all will grant the achievement Passons aux gros poissons, which is a requirement to get the Fishing Artifact Weapon.

All Rare fish are Bind on Pickup.

If you are fishing with the equipped, you will obtain a DIFFERENT version of each rare fish that grants Artifact Power instead of Fishing skill (e.g. you would fish up Carpe froide-rivière instead of Carpe froide-rivière)

Note that this does not retroactively apply to rare fish you obtained before getting the Artifact - the only use for these short of maxing fishing skill is vendoring for a decent chunk of change.

The Rare fish in the chart below are marked with a star (*)

Fishing Bait and Items

Some of the items that help you catch Rare fish will spawn and NPC that grants a fishing buff; others contain bait, or spawn NPCs that drop bait.

All baits are Unique, meaning you can only carry one. The further caveat to this is that you WILL NOT catch any bait that is currently in your inventory!

This can be used to your advantage if you are looking for a particular bait in a zone - by having certain baits in your bags, you will ensure you do not catch them again.

If you are wanting to obtain multiples of the same bait, you can put baits on the Auction House, mail them to an alt, or put them into a Guild Bank or Guild Bank Tab that only you have access to. This will allow you to catch the same bait again.

A portable mailbox like FAC-TEUR (Engineering) or LIV-REUR (from the Draenor garrison Engineering Workshop) is a huge boon when doing this out in the field!

It is worthwhile saving some rare fish bait, in order to level Artifact Power on your if and when you get it.

Commentaire de Voxi

While using the Arcane Lure alone does enable you to catch bait for rare fish in pools (it never worked for me in open water), using the Arcane Lureby itselfdid not help me in obtaining the rare fish the way other posts insinuate that it should.